"Go Welsh" … We did for a week!

Wieden + Kennedy’s latest ad for the Wales Tourist Board series was shot last week in sunny Northwest Wales.

The ad tracks the journey made by a family as they explore Wales using only the Welsh signs to guide them. Long days on set fuelled by excessive amounts of tea and Welsh Oggies has resulted in some amazing footage being shot.

An interesting discovery on the trip was the strange phenomenon of people wandering aimlessly around transfixed by their tiny phone screens in the search of the rarest of Welsh occurrences… "mobile reception."  The distinct lack of mobile reception made for interesting shrieks of pleasure as we travelled round the Welsh countryside with cries of "I have 2 bars" and "What network are you on?" echoing around the convoy.  Fortunately there was plenty of reception in the bar back at the hotel.

This phenomenon is also celebrated in our press ad for Wales, ‘area of outstandingly bad mobile reception’.

After hours the W+K team proved a force to reckon with on the pool table, especially Jon Chads (producer) who impressively got to the final of a particularly large and competitive game of Killer. Darren provided much of the dinner entertainment as he recounted all the red food he was allergic to.  He does not like tomatoes but he does like tomato sauce.

Here we see Darren and Lucy (creative team) on location. Red food not pictured.

The results of the wieden + kennedy London staff survey 2005 are just in.

Key findings from our people. Good: people are happy, the culture is strong and the new building is a hit. Evil: deadlines are tough, we have some challlenging tasks and we’re not always as disciplined as we could be. One question we asked was ‘If you could change one thing about wieden + kennedy, what would it be?’ Among the answers was, ‘Stop Gav from wearing socks with sandals.’

Gav is our IT guy. These are his feet. He does always wear socks and sandals. Maybe it’s a South African thing. But if he’s comfy, we’re not going to force him to change.